bookshelf

GOATMAN

Name: GOATMAN
Author: Thomas Thwaites
ISBN: 978-1-61689-405-4

HOW I TOOK A HOLIDAY FROM BEING HUMAN

by Thomas Thwaites ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 17, 2016

A quirkily entertaining exploration of what it means to be human and what it might be like to be a goat.

bookshelf

What would it be like to be a goat?

Thwaites (The Toaster Project, 2011) explains that his goal was to achieve a “profound shift in perspective” so that he might “look at a chair and [not] automatically associate it with sitting…[and ultimately be able to] look at a(nother) goat and think of it as another person like me.” A 30-something freelance designer still living with his father, the author was at loose ends, still basking in the success of his earlier project building a toaster from scratch. Rather than worrying about his future, he tells us, he decided to explore taking “a holiday from being human” by seeing if he could be accepted by a herd of goats. To achieve this, he designed a goatlike exoskeleton that included prosthetic limbs that prevented him from using his hands. The necessity of checking out his environment without using his hands was one of the more interesting aspects of his major change of perspective. He also committed himself to eating grass, albeit cooked in a pressure cooker over a campfire. Thwaites visited a goat sanctuary in the U.K., where he was able to closely observe their behavior. After practicing on his prosthetic limbs, he felt ready for the last leg of his journey. Walking with his prosthetic limbs was, of course, difficult, but the author notes that adopting a four-legged gait was not an insurmountable challenge. At last, he took the final step; hosted by a Swiss farmer, he joined his herd of goats. They seemed to accept his presence as they grazed on a steep alpine trail, although at one point, they became agitated when he inadvertently challenged their hierarchy. Dozens of photos document his journey from man to goat.

A quirkily entertaining exploration of what it means to be human and what it might be like to be a goat.

Pub Date: May 17, 2016

ISBN: 978-1-61689-405-4

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press

Review Posted Online: March 26, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

bookshelf

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)